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Run Your Existing Windows Installation on Ubuntu with Vmware Player

advicesource.org — Title says it all.

Who dugg this? Made popular Feb 7, 2007

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  • mikaelc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21There is no need to download a pirated version.

    VMware player and VMware server are both free (and legal) to use:
    http://www.vmware.com/products/free_virtualization.html
  • schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+21I can think of at least 2 recent Digg submissions which served as such HOWTOs as well. I think they were even simpler. They got many people's attention and reached the front page. And yes... it's as good as it sounds. Now, if only more people realised that using Linux does not necessarily mean losing access to Win32 apps. There are other ways. Here's a good overview from yesterday:

    Five ways to use Windows apps in Linux

    ,----[ Gist ]
    | 1. Use an open source alternative instead
    | 2. Buy a commercial product that was designed for Linux
    | 3. Use Wine to run the application in Linux
    | 4. Run Windows in a Virtual Machine
    | 5. Run the application on a remote Windows system
    `----

    http://useopensource.blogspot.com/2007/02/five-ways-to-use-windows-apps-in-linux.html
  • dkm201, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16Bad use of the word alas. Minus one word-using point for you!
  • dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12"trouble free M$less existence"
    Um, using windows in a virtual machine is STILL using windows.
    You'd have to use strictly wine and non MS stuff to live free from MS.
  • mtyoung, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14This is exactly what I've been looking for. It would do away with dual booting, which is a pain. I can also see it being used to convert a lot of people to Linux. Imagine not changing an existing Windows installation, but having it run as a Linux program.
    Is it to good to be true?
  • trogdoor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Didn't know if most people knew this or not but qemu has a feature much like coherence in parallels. I don't know if qemu can use physical partitions or not but anyways here is a howto if anybody want's to spend the time to submit this to Digg ( if it hasn't been submitted already, I don't know )

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsXPUnderQemuHowTo

    EDIT: This wasn't supposed to be a reply
  • mtyoung, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I don't think I agree with your "simpler" statement, but that's in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
    The big thing is, it uses your EXISTING Windows OS. On the same machine.

    Wine is a great effort, headed in the right direction, but still miles from the finish line after all this time. And, most importantly it doesn't support the apps I depend on, which aren't available on Linux, and are just to painful to replace. I'm talking about apps with custom scripts developed over years of use.

    I've already converted to every open source app I can, and will continue to do so as they become available.

    If this approach works, then I'm always booting Linux, and always have it available, which will helps the transition.
  • piesforyou, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9"title says it all"

    Does it indeed. In that case I don't need to go to the article, do I?
  • nailer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7You might be interested in an article I wrote using the newly open-source kqemu emulator, including running Windows apps directly on your Linux desktop (rather than the virtualized windows desktop) - like Parallels 'Coherence' feature.

    http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/Windows_XP_apps_on_your_Ubuntu_desktop_now_with_Coherence
  • suppah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6i still have to boot windows to use some usb-things... like the cable+program for my mobile.
  • dcherryholmes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I gave it a try, but it did not work for me. I've double-checked my entries in windows.vmdk and I'm pretty sure they are correct (e.g. subtracted 63 from the output of parted). When I try to start it up I get the following error: "Cannot open the disk '/home/dmc/windows.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Reason: Insufficient permission to access file." Just for the hell of it I set windows.vmdk, windows.vmx, and windowsxp.mbr to 777, but I think the permissions it is referring to are those for accessing the physical disk of the windows partition.

    So, next I tried just launching vmplayer as sudo (BTW, the instructions reference vmplayer, but the windows.vmx script has /usr/bin/vmware in the bang line, which I had to fix). If I do this it starts up, but instead of booting windows, I get the GRUB menu loading up in the virtual machine. After that, I get nada.

    Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?
  • neko, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Yes, bear in mind it won't be perfect. A workmate of mine was using virtualised Ubuntu from a winxp host, and it was damn near impossible to format a USB drive from inside Ubuntu. Why? As far as I could tell, as soon as you unmount the drive from Ubuntu, VMware was thinking "aha, it's not in use by the guest, I'll give it back to the host" and being helpful. And if you plugged it in while the Ubuntu session was focused, Ubuntu was being helpful and mounting it.

    So bear in mind there will be little "gotchas" like these, and it's no-one in particular's fault.
  • Shootfast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6You may have problems with the key validation (especially in a dual boot environment) as this classifies as a major hardware change
  • paker, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I've found for me the easy way is just to install Ubuntu on a separate drive and change the BIOS when I want to change the OS..
  • dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yes, VMware for windows will let you use a physical drive. I've had an existing windows drive run in a VMware VM, although havn't tested it with an old linux install. There is no reason it wouldn't work, only the things to look out for (like VMware's habit of choosing who gets what USB device incorrectly.)

    Also, why is mikaelc, and myself, being dugg down for discussing the process of running a linux VM in windows? Is there something blasphemic about it that I'm missing? Sure it's better the other way around, but that doesn't mean you should be dugg down for merely mentioning such a process.
  • crispytown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Great point. I love how peeps on digg point out the lovely things in life.
  • zixxer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2go into the entire vmware image you made from the windows install and chown and chgrp everything to you...same with the scripts dir (nothing is in it by default) and you might want to chmod it to a+rwx also...that will work
  • SirDiggalot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"I barely see the use of running Windows in Linux, any program which a normal user needs can be replaced with an opensource alternative."

    In many cases, yes. However, "normal users" in the business world use MS products. I've given up on using OpenOffice for Word documents if I have to share those documents with other Word users for editing, etc. The Openoffice converter often messes up more complex documents, often making them uneditable. I wish this weren't the case, and hopefully the new "open" document formats will help fix this problem.

    I've found no issues between OO Calc and Excel, but I don't use these apps too often.

    Also, I've found no OS alternatives to replace Visio and uses the Visio file format... maybe somebody could help me out here.

    I wish it weren't this way. I'd rather use OS alternatives for all of my applications, but it's not quite there in many cases.
  • jdong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Cool article -- I'm sure more expert users would've been able to guess that they can do it -- the handy trick/hint in this guide would definitely be the creation of a hardware profile for XP. Two questions I raise:

    (1) Why Player and not Server? If one was using Server and had the GUI ability to add a physical partition to the system, one'd save a lot of work with editing vmx files, etc. Both are free under similar licensing terms.

    (2) Does this violate the EULA on single-licenced Windows installs? Does running XP off normal hardware and also being able to run it under virtualized hardware violate any license terms?
  • SirDiggalot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There are lots of reasons to run Windows within Linux... web developers for instance have to see whether their web apps run properly on different platforms and browsers. Software developers nowadays have to port to many platforms. See my comments further up for more reasons. It's incredibly useful to run Win in Linux (or vice-versa).
  • crispytown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This howto is for installing and playing World of Wacraft using Wine under Ubuntu-x86.

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WorldofWarcraft

    I bet this guide will work for Kubuntu... i followed this guide and it works for me on my ubuntu install with nvidia drivers.
  • dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It can be done. VMware, last time I checked, is free for windows as well, and inside this Virtual Machine you can install any OS you like. Don't expect it to run nearly as well as it would by itself. And hardware detection will be different, since the virtual hardware is emulated generic stuff. A LiveCD will get you a slightly better experience, but you won't be able to save your settings easily.
  • shizeon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Unfortunately, You can not suspend a VMWare virtual machine when it is using a physical partition. So you have to 'boot' it every time. Having an image file is nice when you need to just 'pop' in and out quickly by using suspend.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2How is the speed of windows in vmware compared to native speed? And will this tutorial work with Vista?
  • zixxer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1im involved with a cyber defense exercise currently....anyways...ive used this software to create vmware images of our ENTIRE windows portion of our domain....and once we get some changes ill do it again....

    here is what i did:

    cloned ALL the windows stuff to vmware images
    copied all the images to every server we have in a secure directory (so if any server fails we have a backup copy of any box on any server)
    then copied the image directories to a samba share on an ubuntu machine
    moved the images to a secure location not on the network share
    then ran the images in vmware server on ubuntu
    i ran the entire domain in a virtual network on ubuntu (exchange 03, server 03 pdc w/ AD, 2000 w/ iis, xp pro, 2003 w/ isa server) and that was my test bed for modifications we have to make.

    i also had vmware server on all the windows boxes as well so we had no point of failures

    this is very powerful software and you can use it WHILE THE MACHINE I LIVE AND RUNNING ON THE NETWORK...no need to take it down to do this
    parallels has the same thing but i needed to run it on a platform where the virtual machine package was free.

    my advice is to try it out....no downside to this

    *note.....i had an OEM copy of windows xp deactivate on me with this....havent had a problem with clean installs however*

    this is also good for migrating servers or workstations off of old or failing hardware
  • aforonda, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I get Could not open /dev/vmmon: No such file or directory.
    Please make sure that the kernel module `vmmon' is loaded.
  • mikaelc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks for the answers, but the post describes how to use an *existing* partition in VMware player - without converting it, or creating a new image.

    Does anyone know if this is possible from Windows?
  • Shootfast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2VMWare offers near native speed with VMWare tools installed on the guest OS, however you wont be able to run any 3d applications (at least not without the experimental changes). QEMU also offers near native speed (with the kqemu accelerator) and can run from vmware disks (again without 3d acceleration), only catch is it isn't as user friendly. You can also download the free VMWare server from the website, or for even better usage, get the Workstation 6 Beta.

    If your chipset supports VT mode, you might want to try out Xen, it allows for 3d acceleration, but is the least user friendly
  • slack31337, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm pretty sure you can run WOW in Linux, now i am not a warcrackhead so this is not from experience but if you google it I'm almost sure there is a way. And i may be talking out of my ass but I think WOW is released as a universal binary.
  • radio1mike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Has anyone used this to game with? There are a lot us out here, who game on their PC and would like to run Linux also. Dual boot? Yeh, if I was single; but I have a family who want just the standard-no-I-don't-to-even-choose-on-a-dual-boot-system.

    I'd really be interested in anyone's experiences...
  • mrWoot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Personally I get a Grub 21 error.
  • mshea, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Over the past couple of weeks I have almost completely switched over to Linux. In my case I use Kubuntu because I like the UI a lot better and it had better initial support for my monitor.

    The only two applications I can't run in Kubuntu that force me to reboot to Windows are Everquest and World of Warcraft.

    Has anyone found an acceptable way to get WOW to play in Kubuntu? I tried Wine but it didn't work out well at all.
  • manitoba98xp, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Maybe some of us would prefer to run Linux/Mac OS X, but need to use the occasional Windows app. In that case, VMWare/Parallels is an ideal solution for an awkward problem. Dual-boot just doesn't suffice.
  • razzatk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2/me too! I'd like to do the opposite of this tutorial, but I don't know if Linux has the equivalent of "hardware profiles" (does it need them?). I've been wanting to try this from windows, but haven't wanted to mess up my existing ubuntu install if it doesn't work. If there are any howtos for the opposite of this tutorial it would be great to see them submitted.
  • mikaelc, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Does anybody know how to do the opposite: boot an existing Linux partition from Windows? Can it be done the same way?
  • crispytown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1vmware video card is like an 16mb of ram vid card. You wont get anything fancy to run on it. Get a true machine. And if you wish try running the game in wine. WoW plays so much smoother on my linux/wine install then it ever had on my winders box.

    The new vista themeing wont even run in vmware... so the only games you will probably get running in vmware is Sol and Mine sweep. Have fun!
  • bealer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@snurfle

    "So let me get this straight... This is a good thing because it lets Linux users run Windows? I don't guess I see the benefit."
    "If Linux is the greatest thing around (and I happen to believe it is a fine OS), then why would I want to run Windows on it?"
    To run specific windows applications. For example if you use Visual Studio .Net, or do anything .Net based. Other apps may include AutoGK (of which there is not a decent Linux equivalent), and AllTunes (before it shuts down!).

    "The only thing I can see that is drawing people to Windows over Linux is games. Why not just buy a game console?"
    Because you can't play 64 player Battlefield on a console. Nor World Of WarCraft etc.... two hugely popular games. In fact PC's are still far better when doing huge online multiplay or FPS.

    "It is really getting tiring to see all of the Linux fanboys telling people how wonderful Linux is "because of all the Windows applications it will run!"
    A PC is designed to do a job regardless of which operating system you choose. It's a fact that there are a lot of great Windows apps out there, whereby the Linux equivalent doesn't yet compare. I think it's great that people can run Linux yet still be able to run all the Windows apps they need.

    "If you want to run windows apps, then run Windows."
    What? When you can run Linux, and run these apps within Linux. Ok...

    "If you want to play games, buy a game system."
    No, play them on the platform they relate to. If that's a PC, then so be it.

    "If you want a computer, run Linux."
    No, run Linux if you have time and dedication. It's about picking what suites you most, even if that does mean Vista or XP.
  • jdong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1VMWare's virtualization is all done without the assistance of hardware VT features (except on 64-bit hosts&guests where it is mandatory), and performs just as well, if not better, than a VT-using virtualization program.

    The performance you get will be near native -- for me a 30-minute compile is only slowed by at most a minute or two. However, there's two kinds of workloads where the fact that it's a virtual machine will REALLY feel apparent:
    (1) Heavy disk IO still performs miserably compared to a native OS, because you are running through two layers of IO scheduling
    (2) Anything that is (or tries to be) graphics intensive will peg the CPU signficantly -- Once I made the mistake of setting a screensaver (a simple 2D one but fast-paced) on a high-priority virtual machine and it pegged 100% the CPU and was NOT a fun experience, as I didn't have an effective way of stopping the screensaver without interrupting the VM :D
  • crispytown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have used vmware converter on many different case setups. I have used it on production servers that run power quality software. This tool saved me so much time and saved me from having to shutdown the server to run a ghost image backup. With the vmware converter The server never went down and now we don't have to buy that huge LiveState package just to create vmware machines from a true hardware machine. This tool has saved me tons of time and money $$$.

    I think the beta version of the converter has better features, and runs better then the newer full 3.0 version. Good thing I didn't remove it from my notebook.
  • curupira, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you get any problems, here is the OFFICIAL vmware guide for that:
    http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/ws_disk_dualboot.html
  • crispytown, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Just run the Vmware converter from a remote machine and it will connect and create an virtual machine of that machine. Linux/winders it doesn't matter. The converter tool can only be installed on a winders box but that is ok because you can do remote converts.
  • radio1mike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks eclecticdave!

    I did not think of that.
  • eclecticdave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1radio1mike,

    I had the same issue when I first installed Linux as dual boot on the home PC - my girlfriend didn't want me to make booting up into Windows more complicated.

    My solution - install Linux, then change the Grub config to set Windows to auto-boot after 5 seconds if nothing is pressed at the menu (moving Windows to the top of the menu helps too - comfort factor thing). She's happy because it just boots into Windows as normal with barely any more delay, and I'm happy because I can boot into Linux easily as long as I'm a bit nippy pressing the down-arrow key :-)
  • zixxer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1what kind of images are you guys pulling? i have not tried this with a dual boot lin/win system yet...so i dont know the effects of GRUB having on the image being able to be made.
  • HsoKinees, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1heh, interesting, a split second after clicking on the link, i noticed the title uses the same font as ThePirateBay :D
    Yarrrrrrrrrrr!
  • AkiraXXX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Same trouble here. I wonder if this is designed to work with GRUB installed?
  • xelloss, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1VMWare+ Schools crappy computers sucks.
  • Druidictus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Vanderpool?
  • wakaseoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1There is nothing new in this article, so many howtos hae already been dugg.
    buried.
  • lastorset, on 06/02/2008, -0/+0Aha, here is the story wakaseoo was thinking of: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Convert_Physical_Window ...
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